Coppertone Sport: UV Protection and Anti-Oxidants in 1 Step

Finally, I am starting my sunscreen reviews. It can be a little hard to try and be original when writing about sunscreens over and over, so I’ve decided to forgo that and we’ll just be as straight forward as possible.

Coppertone Sport has long been one of my favorite sunscreens for intense sun exposure. Primarily I take it on vacation (I like to go on Hawaiian vacations where I sit by the pool and occasionally swim) and its waterproof/sweatproof formula definitely is appealing for that situation. In addition, my husband is more than willing to use it as it isn’t too girly.This year Coppertone has changed things up a little bit, and if you take a look at the bottle it’s easy to figure out what that it. Right up at the top it tells you that the formula is “now with replenishing antioxidants!” What exactly does that mean? I had the opportunity to talk to Dr. Tom Meyer, research fellow in charge of antioxidant research at the Coppertone Solar Research Center to find out.

Dr. Meyer shared with me a bit of information about what Coppertone had done in formulating this product. First, you should know that the product is tested on both “fake” and real human skin (ever wonder where the extra skin from surgeries goes? Now you know… it sometimes is donated/bought and goes to things like this). Anyways, after a lot of research into which anti-oxidants they were interested in using, they started experimenting. Part of the problem with using anti-oxidants in the sun is that with UV exposure, some of them will actually be turned into reactive oxygen species themselves (yes, this is less than desirable). Once they ensured their chosen anti-oxidants were stable in UV, they looked at how well it worked. I wish I could show you the images of the amount of reactive oxygen species. With UV exposure ROS are everywhere in the skin. A little sunscreen and you can see there is less ROS, but definitely still quite a bit. Using Coppertone with Replenishing Antioxidants…. there is NO ROS. It looks like the skin was never even exposed to the sun!

So, there must be a reason my husband and I buy this product year after year right?

It seems to be a little lighter on my skin than other sunscreens (though, you definitely feel it there). It does smell like sunscreen but the smell is a little less and seems to fade after about 20-30 minutes. I can swim in it and once out of the pool I don’t feel as though I have washed all of it away, meaning the sun is not immediately scorching me. This year my husband did remark once that it was “stinging his eyes” while he was sweating at the pool, which was unusual. He still wore this sunscreen for the rest of our trip and did not have this problem again, so we were not quite sure why that had happened.

I was surprised to see once I plotted out the active sunscreen ingredients that there is no UVAII coverage (remember that I get these coverages from the FDA, some of these ingredients to cover slightly larger UV ranges).

3 Comments

It's fabulous that you're getting sunscreen and sun protection information out to your readers, at the time when they need it. I too used Coppertone Sport for years until I found Solbar Zinc. It has enough micro zinc oxide to block the entire UVA rays and is much gentler on the eyes. It binds to skin well and smells even less like sunscreen. This is my new favorite for wet/sweaty/water play.

I too like those Hawaiian sun vacations and this year I notices a lot of people carrying umbrellas for sun protection-brilliant!

Love your blog content, thanks for a good bridge between science and beauty.

Thanks for reviewing this sunscreen. My husband loves sports but he does not like wearing sunscreen (and he got sun burnt), because after he sweats there are some "white lines" on his face. I will absolutely buy this sun block for him.